Working with Boys and Men

Calls for greater male participation are now a commonplace in work on sexual and reproductive health and rights. The need to engage men in efforts to prevent sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and promote sexual health and gender equality is well accepted. But we know less about the optimal forms of such engagement, particularly when it comes to moving beyond a focus on changing individual men’s attitudes and behaviours.

The paper presents an overview of the role men can play in combatting violence against women. After a short introduction on the broader development in the thinking of men and violence and the changes in the perspectives on men’s violence, different initiatives are presented.
These are grouped into general prevention strategies, treatment programs, youth and schools and then fatherhood. The last part is devoted to recommendations for further actions.

A new report highlights the everyday actions men can take to help reduce and prevent men’s violence against women. The report is titled Men Speak Up: A toolkit for action in men’s daily lives, and it was released on November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The report is available at the following web address: http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/resources/research. (There is also an abridged version.)

In 2006, the Rogers Park Young Womens Action Team (YWAT) launched a campaign to engage young men as allies in addressing violence against girls. The YWAT, a youth-led and adult-supported social change project, conducted a participatory action research project that included the creation of a film called Real Talk (in collaboration with Beyondmedia Education), survey research, and a set of popular education workshops. In addition, the YWAT organized and implemented a two-day train the trainer workshop for fifteen young men ages 14-22 in November 2007.

Eleven male business leaders from a group called the Male Champions of Change have devised this best practice guide of strategies to assist large organisations to increase the number of women in leadership roles.

The Male Champions of Change, convened by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, are committed to discussing and promoting strategies and actions that elevate women’s representation in leadership.

'Because I am a Girl: The State of the World’s Girls 2011 - So, what about boys?' is the fifth in a series of annual reports published by Plan examining the rights of girls throughout their childhood, adolescence and as young women.

The report shows that far from being an issue just for women and girls, gender is also about boys and men, and that this needs to be better understood if we are going to have a positive impact on societies and economies.

When men participate as students in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) classrooms, they undergo feminist change. They adopt more progressive understandings of gender, show greater support for feminism, and increase their involvement in antisexist activism. Male students in WGS classrooms benefit to the same degree as female students, showing similar levels of change, although they start with poorer attitudes and thus the gap between them and their female peers persists. At the same time, male students’ presence highlights critical challenges to feminist pedagogy: gendered patterns of interaction, resistance to feminist teaching, and limitations on women’s critical reflections on personal experience. When men teach WGS, typically they are ‘‘graded up’’—evaluated by students as less biased and more competent than female professors. Male professors face distinct dilemmas in teaching about gender inequality from a position of privilege. Yet, like male students, they can adopt traitorous and antipatriarchal social locations and standpoints, developing pedagogies for and by the privileged.

How can we prevent violence against women? And how can we make progress by engaging men? This one-day workshop provides a comprehensive introduction to frameworks and strategies for primary prevention, with a focus on engaging and mobilising men.

Engaging boys and men to stop violence, especially gender-based violence, is recognised as an important approach by international and national institutions and organisations as well as by individuals. Although some boys have been working for many years along with girls and women to combat violence, their systematic participation is now being acknowledged as important and necessary if we are to change the cycle of violence that exists within the communities and societies. The fact that not all boys are socialised to be violent and the fact that not all definitions of being men imply violence gives hope for changing the world we live in.

Save the Children has therefore developed, along with its history of major publications in the past documenting good practices and challenges of working with boys and men as partners for change, this step-by-step guide to provide practical steps explaining how to go about engaging boys and men as partners to stop the violence against boys and girls, women and other men.

Students in the third-year Sociology course Men and Masculinities at the University of Wollongong have the option of writing a piece of critical autobiography – what I’ve termed a ‘Reflective Journal’ – rather than a conventional essay, for their final written assessment. This document provides guidelines for the Reflective Journal, and further resources on critical autobiography.